


How We Were Unburied

by Scourge of Nemo (Disguise_of_Carnivorism)



Series: This, Our Season Of Fire [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Din cries, F/M, Found Family, Hypersensitive Din Djarin, Mandalorian Culture, MandomeraWeek, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Planet Sorgan (Star Wars), Post-Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-10
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-17 03:54:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29960541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Disguise_of_Carnivorism/pseuds/Scourge%20of%20Nemo
Summary: This time, when Din Djarin steps onto Sorgan, two things are different: He's completely alone, and he's not wearing his helmet. Omera finds him anyway.Or: A post-season 2 interlude, wherein Din tries to learn another way of life.
Relationships: Din Djarin/Omera
Series: This, Our Season Of Fire [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2203575
Comments: 14
Kudos: 43
Collections: Mandomera Week 2021





	How We Were Unburied

**Author's Note:**

> I am playing fast and loose with Sorgan's climate, but this is space, so.

He steps onto Sorgan alone.

He had invited Boba and Fennec. They’d exchanged a quick glance full of something beyond words — a language he doesn’t know, and hasn’t been invited to learn.

Boba shook his head. “We have work elsewhere. But I’ll drop you anywhere you want to go.” 

So _Slave I_ touches down, and Din steps out without them. His boots touch the moist, springy jungle ground, and he realizes that this is the first time in months — maybe an entire year — that he’s walked out of a ship well and truly alone. 

He tries not to think about it, as he walks toward the krill farms. 

His helmet has replaced Grogu’s soft form in his sling. The darksaber hangs heavy on his belt beneath it. The helmet knocks against his thigh as he walks, instead of settling gently. 

But he cannot put it back on. This is not the Way.

It feels different, to breathe unfiltered air: he can feel the humidity on his face, smell the metallic tang and rotting greenery of the swamp. Can practically feel his hair curling in the air. Everything looks brighter, more colorful, too; it makes him fight back a squint. 

He’s used to eyes on him. Everywhere he goes, people stop and stare, turn to look. They calculate the weight of beskar and the heft of credits in their palms; they run through every small crime they’ve ever committed, thinking, _Is this the one? Does this armor carry the chip that means my death?_

But now he can feel the weight of their gazes on his face. They do not see the Mandalorian, one of thousands who have marched through the galaxy. Without the helmet, he is just a man in a suit of armor, no different from Cobb Vanth or any other scavenger with airs. 

A traitorous voice whispers to him: They thought Cobb was a Mandalorian. Fett, too. These people knew him for months; he lived among them, taught them to fight. The armor lives, regardless of who wears it.

He could put it back on. No one would know; no one would care. The armor makes a Mandalorian, in the galaxy’s consciousness. 

Manda: the place where warriors go, once they’ve died an honorable death, walking the Way. There, they will march forever with their forefathers. The soul.

Dar’manda: one without a soul. 

He could live as if he has not given away his soul. But he will always know that he has. 

Every eye that crawls over his face now is one more person who has witnessed his unmaking. 

He’s stalled in front of the village common house, staring into space. Every creak of reeds, every quiet thunk of a tool into wet soil, rings through his ears unmuted by his helmet’s controls. Children laugh and jump and play on the streets, just feet away. Some of them seem familiar — perhaps they played with Grogu, or perhaps he just wants to see some evidence that mostly, things have not changed. That the universe keeps turning, even as he stands struck in place on that Imperial cruiser, helmet in his hands, face bare, cheeks wet.

He’s crying again. He doesn’t seem to be able to stop that, lately. People stare. 

And then a hand touches his elbow, gently, and he is whirling quickly, reaching for his blaster and — 

It’s just Omera. Looking him in the eyes. 

Seeing her without the visor between them feels like meeting her for the first time all over again. Without the tinted glass, her dark eyes are bright, and every natural shadow and splash of light plays over her cheekbones, in the hollows of her cheeks, in her laugh lines and the kindness of her smile. 

The direct eye contact is too much, and he has to look away. He moves his whole head, ducks it toward the ground, even though he _knows_ now that the motion doesn’t communicate the same thing that it used to. 

_We want you to stay_ , she had said all those months ago. And: _I don’t belong here_ , he had said. 

But now, he can’t put his armor back on, and he doesn’t know where else is left to go without it. 

“Come with me,” she says. He doesn’t have anything left except to follow.

* * *

Omera takes him to her home this time, not the barn. She pushes him down on a narrow sleeping pad, brings him a cup of water and makes him drink the whole thing.

“Sleep,” she says.

“It’s the middle of the day,” he responds, though his entire body aches and sleep would probably do him some good. He’s covered in bacta, under his flightsuit, and Fett has done his best to set a few misplaced ribs. 

She raises an eyebrow at him. “And you’re crying in the village square.” 

He feels a flush of shame, and it must show through on his face, because Omera’s immediately softening.

It’s so _frustrating_ , how everyone can see every single thing that plays through his mind, now. Boba and Fennec had just looked away politely, pretended they couldn’t see it. Professional courtesy. Look away from pain, unless you plan to gloat about it. But Omera looks straight at him.

“Hey,” she says, voice gentle. “You do what you want.”

A child screeches outside, voice pure joy. And he doesn’t want anything, right now. 

So he sleeps.

* * *

After the first day, he takes the armor off, and he hides it in a chest in the back of the house. He can’t bear to have the helmet totally out of sight, though. That sits next to the bed, in the corner of the room, on the nightstand — like it’s a decorative vase, instead of his sole remaining connection to his lost Tribe.

After the second, he can’t bear to keep taking Omera’s bed, so he offers to sleep on the floor. She refuses and suggests they try to share. 

The third, they do try — to share. But every bump and jostle in the night sets Din’s heart pounding, and after wearing armor for so long his skin feels strange and too-sensitive, and every little brush of cloth or hands feels like the sound of rending metal on his nerves. 

The fourth, he sleeps on the floor. 

The fifth, he leaves the house. He thinks about walking deep into the woods, as far as he can. For awhile, he tries it.

The seventh, he comes back. When he darkens the threshold, Winta smiles at him, and she grabs his hand.

“My name’s Din,” he says, when Omera comes to greet him.

“Nice to meet you, Din.” 

It feels like permission to be someone other than the Mandalorian, for awhile. He’s not sure he wants it.

* * *

Those first weeks pass in a strange haze. 

He joins the krill harvesters, dressed in farmers’ clothes. It feels like begging death to come for him. At any second, a blaster could hit him, and he would die. He looks over his shoulder constantly, eyes going back to the house where his armor sits hidden, unattended. 

No one in the village would dare. None of them have even dared to ask him where he came from, why he’s back. The raiders are all dead. Moff Gideon is imprisoned. But he still has nightmares about dark-gloved hands, reaching for it.

Still, he keeps the darksaber with him. 

Every day, he reminds himself: he is krill farming, and he has killed the bandits, and this is a safe place. 

Omera shows him how to feed the krill, how to check that they are ready to pluck from the water, how to gather them into a basket. It is exhausting work, under the wet heat. The bright light of Sorgan’s sun has him squinting before midday; the voices of villagers and laughter of children grow from soothing to agony by sunset. He winces and ignores the throbbing in his head. 

It wasn’t like this, when he wore the helmet. But he keeps working until he can’t think. Blisters break out on his hands in places he’s never had them before. 

Omera sits him down, and rubs cream over his palms, and wraps his hands. 

“I can do that myself,” he says. “Later. I can still work.”

“I know,” she returns, and pats his hands. “But I’m going to show you how to bury supplies, so they outlast the fire season.” 

“Okay,” he says, just grateful to have another task.

She takes him behind the krill farms, away from the other farmers. It’s quieter, here, and he feels a rush of gratefulness: the forest muffles the screeches of human life to a low hum. 

“We do this every year,” Omera says, digging a shovel into the muck. “As the wet season turns dry, the forests catch fire. Lightning, a stray spark from a speeder — anything. It’ll go up like that.” She snaps her fingers. “The houses are all treated. The chemicals are expensive, and they don’t stop heat — just flame. The food will spoil if it gets too hot. So we set aside things that we will need, when it’s all over. Anything left above ground, we can afford to let burn.”

Din takes a shovel, and he starts digging with her. Soon they have cleared six trenches, long and narrow and just deep enough to accommodate crates. The earth feels looser where they dig; Omera seems to be clearing fresh holes in old places. 

Din moves to help her lift the crates into place.

“It’s like a rebirth, at the end of the fire season,” she says, as she kneels in the dirt to settle the crates in. “When we dig everything up, we wipe off the ashes and we begin again.” 

“Hm,” Din says. He thinks of the Armorer’s forge: the imperial crest melting off beskar, the brutal flames returning bars to their rightful form, the clang of metal and the smell of ash.

* * *

That night, Din waits until Winta and Omera sleep soundly. Then he pries up the floorboards. Underneath lies just dirt and clay, because Sorgan is a simple place, with simple buildings, and also because the hammered earth helps keep back the bushfires.

He digs with his hands until his nails are cracked and filthy. And then he digs some more.

Soon there is a beskar-sized hole in the ground. It feels so final, and so lonely. He has only ever buried beskar while someone wears it, when he helped dig mass graves for the fallen Mando’ade in those days just after the Clone Wars, as the Tribe scattered. That practice faded, over the years — beskar became too scarce, too valuable, to bury with its children.

Mando’ade still went into unmarked graves, though, buried side-by-side with their comrades. 

His beskar will rest alone. 

One day he hopes he can return it to the Tribe, where they will find a worthy wearer. He wants it to go to the foundlings, though he now has no say over its fate. For now, though, this will ensure that no one undeserving takes it — and that he himself will not be tempted to don it again.

When he finishes replacing the boards, he realizes he has made more noise than he meant to. Omera stands behind him, watching silently, wrapped in a thick robe. 

“I hope you’re done getting my house muddy,” she says, sounding more amused than angry.

“Sorry. I’m going to clean it up,” Din says. 

“You couldn’t have done it during the day?” 

Winta’s head peaks out from behind her mother’s knees. 

Din’s struck by an unfamiliar urge to scratch the back of his neck. He’s spent so long carefully watching his every movement, to hide his emotions or to avoid telegraphing his plans. But now that the armor doesn’t weigh down his limbs, doesn’t turn every twitch into a potential threat, his limbs want to forget that careful control. 

“Sorry,” Din repeats at last, realizing that he’s been silent for longer than socially appropriate. He owes her more than that, though. He wants to tell her more than that. “I just didn’t… want anyone else to see.”

He sleeps better, that night. 

* * *

Fire season comes. Mostly, everything is fine — the villagers on Sorgan know how to direct the flames, how to catch a fire early and send it on its way.

Din learns how to fight fires the old way, with lines of buckets and fingers crossed for the best, and the new way, with precious foams and other chemical agents. They try to only use the latter for the worst of the worst; no one knows exactly what consequences they could have for the earth, the crops, the krill, as the foam seeps into the ground. 

Every night, Din wipes soot from his face. 

It takes a long time, for him to settle. It takes months before he really realizes how much of an impact that year on the run has had on him — how it has changed his nerves so that the slightest disruption of routine sends his heart racing, how accustomed he has become to scarcity and discomfort, even moreso than he had been before. 

He still finds himself wanting to turn to Grogu — to narrate the newest thing he has learned. But as always, the only thing at his side is the darksaber. He is growing used to that new weight. 

It has gotten easier for him to touch, over these last weeks. Loud noises still ring too long in his head; repetitive sensations still make him shudder. But sometimes he reaches out to Omera and takes her hand. She lays a hand on his shoulder, on his face, and with warning, he can sink into her touch.

He still sleeps on the floor some days, when the smells and the sounds and the touches scrape like wires against him. Other nights, he can’t sleep at all, so he walks the borders of the village until he’s so exhausted he can barely see straight. But mostly, they share a bed, and he wakes warm and comfortable and wrapped in Omera’s arms, her hair brushing his face, her scent — sweat and dirt and florals — surrounding him.

It’s not the same as waking up in beskar’s grasp: it’s softer, more vulnerable, comforting and terrifying all at once. But it’s starting to feel just as safe. 

Still, he sleeps with the darksaber close at hand. 

* * *

“Hey kid,” he says to Winta, one day. “Do you want to learn to shoot?” Then he looks to Omera. “Uh, I mean… is she allowed to learn how to shoot?” 

Omera smiles. “I’ve already taught her.”

“Oh.”

“But you’re welcome to take her shooting.” 

“I want to shoot!” Winta shouts, grinning. 

So he gathers up a pile of trash to use as targets, and slings a blaster over his hip. He didn’t bury his weapons with the beskar, but he hasn’t worn them in months, either. The weight feels familiar and strange all at once — he remembers the weight of the holster, how to adjust; it feels right again, to have it on him.

And yet it doesn’t fit quite the same, anymore. His thighs and waist have grown thicker from hard work on the krill farm. And living with his helmet off, not on the run, he’s been eating better. He’s gained more muscle, and a layer of plush over it. He feels healthier and stronger than ever. 

But the trigger sits at a different place on his hip, and he has to let out the straps, and all his instincts clash uncomfortably with his sense-memory and his body-memory and his current reality. 

Everything feels… different. 

He’s still a good shot, though, he notes with grim pride as a few test blaster bolts slam into the makeshift targets set twenty paces away.

He takes a moment to breathe in the smoke, to feel the gun back in his hand. Maybe too long a moment.

“You okay?” Winta asks, and he just nods.

He still hasn’t totally figured out how to interact with a child that can talk back to him. He’s used to small gestures, puzzling out hints and clues. Words — it’s odd. He’s often at a loss. 

So he asks Winta: “What has your mom taught you?” 

Winta walks him through it, and it’s clear she knows more about blaster safety than many of the bounty hunters Din’s encountered on the job. He is, as always, impressed by Omera’s knowledge and competence — he certainly didn’t teach Winta anything last time he was in the village. 

For a moment, he wonders about it. Omera hasn’t told him where she learned how to shoot, but then, he hasn’t told her much of anything, either. She seems to sense that he hasn’t wanted to say much of anything, lately; she’s fallen out of her habit, from that first visit, of asking him gentle questions. They prefer to sit in companionable silence at the end of the day, after cooking and eating together. 

He’ll have to ask her. Tonight, he resolves. 

“Okay, kid,” he says, “we’re going to try long-range, then. I won’t show you how the blaster works, because you already know. But this one’s a bit heavier than what you learned on.” 

He kneels next to her, shows her the make-specific parts — the safety, the intensity settings, how to recalibrate after a jam or reset after an overheat. Shows her the best way to aim and brace against recoil with this particular blaster.

Then he sets the gun in her hands.

After Winta spends an hour or so testing herself, her shots hit truer each time. He barely has to remind her to stabilize her form; he shows her other ways to breathe and target, a few times. At one point, he pokes a knee to get her to widen her stance. But mostly, she’s a phenomenal shot, and well-taught. Din has to reset the targets often, and some, she completely obliterates. 

He starts chucking a few targets into the air, by the end. 

“Good job,” he says, and claps her on the back. 

“Thanks. Can we do it again?” Her grin is infectious, ferocious, full of pride. 

“Yeah,” he says, and finds that he means it. He wonders if he can find one of the machines that shoots the clay pieces. She’s ready for it.

“Hey Din,” she says. He’s started to stand, but the hesitance in her voice stops him. “What happened to your other kid?”

Omera hasn’t asked him. Out of respect, or out of fear to know the answer, he’s not sure. Or perhaps she’s just waiting for him to volunteer it, as she has waited for him in so many things. 

“He’s with his family,” he says. 

“I thought you were his family? Can’t you go see him.” 

Din’s eyes sting. “I don’t know,” he answers honestly. He could try to seek out the Jedi. He could probably see Grogu again — but then he would have to part with him again, too. “I’m — I don’t know.” 

“Okay.” Winta just knocks against him and touches a finger to his nose, in some ways just as perceptive as her mother. 

Before they leave, he takes another try at the targets before gathering them up. One by one, the remaining pieces of trash burn away under blasterfire. 

Everything may feel different, yeah, but he’s still a good shot. 

* * *

He’s lived on Sorgan for a year, maybe more, Bo-Katan shows up.

She and her Nite Owls strut into the village like they own it, helmets on, guns drawn. On the offense.

Poor form, in Din’s opinion. There’s no reason to imply threat in a peaceful place like this.

When everyone refuses to talk to her, she takes her helmet off quickly enough, realizing she’ll get more traction that way.

She asks not about him, but about the armor. _This tall, this broad, all beskar, shiny?_ One of the other krill farmers — a guy who saw him come into the village — shakes his head at her, then _winks_ at Din. 

“No one like that here,” he says. 

She follows the path of the wink. Subtlety… not a strong suit of anyone here on Sorgan. People are either here to hide because they can’t stay low anywhere else, or they’re here to live a simple life, use their body to produce what they can sell to put clothes on their backs. 

Her eyes meet his. He waits for the moment of recognition. But she just stares at him, face uncomprehending. Trying to puzzle out the wink. 

He waves at her and grins. 

She saw his face, just once, that day on the cruiser. But his hair has grown long since then; it brushes his shoulders now. His face is sun-weathered, darker than it’s ever been, and he’s put on at least twenty pounds of muscle and heft, if not thirty. He’s clean-shaven too, most days — Omera doesn’t like how his mustache feels against her lips. 

He looks just like every other boring, simple man on this backwoods planet. 

She looks away, and he thinks, for the rest of the day, that he is safe — that he has avoided whatever horrible task she has come to put to him, that he’s free of any debt she might think he owes. 

The darksaber burns at the small of his back, though, under the vest he wears to work.

But then when he returns home, exhausted and sweaty at the end of a long day, she’s waiting for him.

“I didn’t recognize you, at first,” Bo-Katan says, something like triumph in her voice, “without the beskar. Where is it?”

“Safe,” Din says, voice harsh as he can make it without the vocoder as a shield. He looks behind him. Omera’s due back a bit later, after she rounds up Winta and pulls her away from the other children. 

He wants to just brush past Bo-Katan, go inside and lock the door. 

He’s halfway to doing it. 

“Why are you hiding out on this scumhole of a planet?” Bo-Katan asks. But it’s rhetorical, of course. “You’re a _coward_.”

“I took off my helmet,” Din says, “this was not the Way. I do not deserve the armor anymore.” 

“I take my helmet off. _I’m_ still a Mandalorian. I’ve _ruled_ _Mandalore_.”

“Yes,” he says, “but it was ill-gotten. This is not the Way.” 

“ _Cultist_ ,” she spits, like that first time they met. Din does not believe her. He wonders if this is the real source of the animosity she holds toward his people: that the Tribe believes she ought not rule. But he sees, at least, how his Creed must seem to her, this woman who has scrabbled to rule a dying planet for almost as long as he has been alive. What a convenient excuse she must think his Creed. “Yet you still have the darksaber.”

“Take it. I don’t want it.” He is tired. Omera is coming home soon. He wants to start shelling krill, to fry them up for a nice dinner. He wants to sit down. He does not want this reminder of last year, of what he has lost. 

“I won’t. Beating you like this — you’re pathetic. It’s shameful.” 

“Okay,” he says. “Then leave.”

“What would get you to join us?” Bo-Katan asks instead, voice cold. 

“Your crusade is not mine. I’m sorry that I can no longer keep my end of our promise, but I have broken a much larger pledge,” Din says.

“I’m serious. _What would it take_?” 

He thinks, long and hard. 

“Find my tribe.” 

“The Children of the Watch? You want me to — _really_ ,” she says. “You want me to find those heretics, who creep around in hiding while the rest of us die to retake our planet?” 

“Find the Tribe,” he repeats, firmly. He will not use her word for his people. “Tell them who I am. What’s happened. Bring them here. _They_ can convince me. If they’ll have me back. And if they won’t — one of them will be bold enough to take the saber. Then you can fight _them_.”

He had looked, before coming here. He has kept looking, bribing visitors with drinks and the few credits he can spare. The Tribe is well out of sight. If he could not find them, she will not, either. 

And finally, Bo-Katan leaves. 

* * *

Fire season ends. 

The whole village celebrates. They dig up the supplies, break out the spotchka, light bonfires and grill krill on hot slabs of metal over the flames. There is something powerful, to laugh and love in front of flames that they control, after weathering the fickle destruction of the fire season. Children laugh and play games by moonlight. Everyone dances under the stars. 

He thinks of the beskar, buried deep in the mud. It will stay there, a little longer. But he feels, with growing dread, that the armor that was once him will be needed once again. 

He’s not sure how he feels about that, now. He doesn’t really want to think about it.

Right now, his belly’s full of charred krill and greens, and he’s floating a bit after a glass or two of spotchka, and the whole world just feels _good_.

Omera glances at him from behind her hair. The firelight flickers on her skin, and her eyes are dark, and her smile is warm. She’s taken off her boots, letting her bare toes curl into the soil; he starts to do the same. She extends a hand to him. 

Din has never learned how to dance, but he thinks he might enjoy it. So he takes her hand and lets her draw him towards the flames. 

He holds her close. They dance until his feet are sore, and then they dance some more. Everything blurs as they spin around the fire; he leaps out of the way as children tumble past, knocking into them as they chase a ball. He goes back to Omera, re-enters the circle of her arms. 

“Here,” she says, “like this,” and leads him through the steps of some Sorgan traditional dance — one he’s watched many times, but never attempted. His legs feel weak and ineffective, like he’s learning the Rising Phoenix all over again. But it is fun, and he doesn’t need to be perfect. No one will starve or die if he can’t master the steps. There is no weight here, no consequence.

He can just be. 

Then, when they’re panting and laughing and his legs can’t take another step, he draws her aside. In the shadows that flicker beyond the ring around the bonfire, he kisses her. He’s been doing that more often, now, even outside their home — it made him feel painfully self-conscious, at first, made him conscious of every look to his face, and even just the sensation of a lip on his or a hand stroking over his ear could become too much for him. 

But that night, he kisses her until they’re both breathless and laughing, and then he pulls her back to the fire, and they dance some more. 

* * *

Din’s kneeling when the galaxy shifts once again. Omera works next to him. The sun beats down on them. He’s gotten used to it; it doesn’t overwhelm him the same way, any longer. Though he’s taken to wearing a hat and putting soft cotton in his ears, to manage his continued sensitivity to everything. 

A murmur ripples through the krill farmers — the kind of soft mutters that only mean trouble, disaster even. Last year, those kinds of murmurs would have set him into overdrive, sent him running from the farms to check on Omera and on Winta, to pull his blaster from its hiding place and carry it with him until the disturbance passes.

It’s still his first instinct. But he has other options, now. 

He looks up.

And there, on the horizon: Mandalorians. Dozens of them. Armed to the teeth. Proud. The armorer leads them, golden helm glinting under the sun. They march side by side toward him, on this backwater planet. 

He never imagined Bo-Katan would find them. But he _has_ thought about what he would do, what he would say, if he saw the Tribe again. On those long, late nights that he paced the whole perimeter of the village, he would rehearse prostrating himself before the Amorer’s forge. He doesn’t have a speech, or a plan; he’s never been able to find the words he needs.

 _We want you to stay_ , Omera had said, long ago. He hadn’t belonged here, then.

He thinks of his beskar, buried deep. He thinks of the life he had, and the life he has built. He feels the darksaber at his back.

Din stands. He takes Omera’s hand. He squeezes it. He takes a long, slow breath. Wipes the sweat from his brow with his free hand. Winta runs to them, and he settles his arm across her shoulder. 

And they all go to meet the Tribe. 

**Author's Note:**

> Stay tuned for a NSFW fic posted in this series for Day 5 of Mandomera week.
> 
> Thanks so much for reading! Catch me on [tumblr](http://neverfeedthesarcophagi.tumblr.com).


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